


Stay the Night

by Shadow_sensei



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Dreams, Dreams of past life, Emotional Hurt, Flashbacks, Ghost!Victor, Ghosts, Haunted Hotel, M/M, Parallel Universes, Reincarnated!Yuuri, Reincarnation, Unresolved Emotional Tension, for like two paragraphs, very very very mild smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 12:39:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10719504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_sensei/pseuds/Shadow_sensei
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki spends a week sleeping at an old hotel in St. Petersburg, expecting nothing more than a comfortable bed and a clean bathroom. Instead, he makes a mysterious encounter with a man he can neither see nor hear, who can only communicate with him by writing in the dust, and whose identity is only divulged to Yuuri within his dreams.





	Stay the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This oneshot is completely different from anything I've written for this fandom in the past. It's probably the polar opposite of the fluffy romance of Icicles Melt in Summer, but even so, I really hope that you read and appreciate this little fic!
> 
> Now with [cover art](http://dystopiansushi.tumblr.com/post/161146430223/limon2d-stay-the-night-by-dystopiansushi) by [@limon2d](http://www.limon2d.tumblr.com) !!

_The first night._

Outside of the car, the drizzling rain patters softly against the asphalt of the back parking lot, the old, cracked, painted sign reading “HOTEL ST. PETERSBURG” lit brightly with blue-white iridescent bulbs. The front doors, heavy and wooden, are silent as the man opens them, and his delicate footsteps click softly against the tiled floors. The lobby is immense, with ceilings nearly three stories high, dimly lit crystal chandeliers casting a yellowish hue over the tables on one side, over the closed piano in the corner, but shining no light over the set of wide, carpeted staircases that dominate the space. The room is reminiscent of a time of glamour and jazz, a century ago, echoes of tinkling piano music and tapping shoes and laughter running through the walls—then, cutting through, the sound of something scampering over his head, so soft he thinks he must have imagined it.

The receptionist is missing, the desk void of life, a small bell sitting in the center and begging to be rung by a willing hand. The metal object, unwavering, repels him at first, a strange acidity suddenly lining the roof of his mouth. He grimaces, and swallows down his saliva, ridding himself of the unpleasant flavor. His fingers are dry, and his nails are bitten down, a habit he’s never been able to shake.

After a moment of contemplation, he reaches out a palm to strike the bell once. A woman comes out immediately from a back room, her face vaguely reminiscent of that of a hawk, her lips thin and unsmiling, cheekbones, covered in a powdery blush that stands out against pale skin, protruding like arrowheads, but her cheeks sagging slightly in the way that they do in people who have aged with a permanent frown. Her Russian accent is strong, but her English is clear and precise as she asks him for his information, and he provides it. He tells her he’s from Detroit, but is originally from Japan, and she seems disinterested. The receptionist points him toward a case full of maps and brochures of the area, and he nods to her with a smile. She turns her gaze down to the desk. No more words are exchanged.

The man considers exploring for a bit, before he goes out to retrieve his bags from the car. He takes the great stairs up, and goes out onto the balcony that overlooks the lobby. The ceiling here is low, and there are no lights, save for the chandeliers whose bases he is now at the height of, under which he can see the receptionist still sitting behind her desk, writing onto a piece of paper. There is one computer in the lobby, and the receptionist does not have one. By a second flight of stairs, he sees a sign, reading “Crystal Ballroom” in Russian. He looks around one more time, and walks upstairs. This staircase is enclosed by walls, and he hurries up.

He finds himself on a small floor, facing a set of doors with glass windows. It’s dark behind the doors, and from his vantage point, he only sees the silhouette of his reflection. He moves over to take a closer look, peering through the door windows. He makes out two large columns, and chairs organized in rows. A light is on in the corner, but from his position, he isn’t able to make out where it’s coming from. He realizes that his right hand is on the doorknob, and he immediately pulls it off, feeling nearly as though he’s been burned.

He hears the creaky sound of the elevator beside him, hears a distant _ding_ announcing the arrival of an individual on one of the floors. He presses the elevator button quickly, and enters the cab, which makes him feel mildly claustrophobic. He’s never felt claustrophobic before, but here, the small space between the walls, painted a grayish white, seems cold, closing in on him. He quickly presses the button for the top floor, floor fourteen.

He slides his card into the reader on the door, and it opens without fail. He steps into the room, strangely spacious, dominated by a large, cherry-wood dresser against one of the walls, on which sits an old television. He takes the remote and turns it on, but there is only static. He turns it off, the sound jarring. The windows are large, overlooking the main road, the neon signs of the restaurants seeming distinctly out of place beside the lacy curtains, the floral bed covers, the wallpaper that reminds him of his parents’ house in those days he spent with them before their passing, only a few weeks apart from each other.

He goes back to his car from the back door of the hotel to take his suitcase up. As he shuts the door, a woman of a tall stature turns the corner, swaying slightly as she walks, long hair swinging over her shoulders. She holds a rainbow-colored umbrella, despite the fact that the rain has stopped, and her ears are covered by a pair of black headphones. She wears no glasses, but even under the streetlights, he can’t quite make out her eyes. She smiles widely at him, and begins speaking.

“You come very late!” she exclaims, a thick Japanese accent and what he suspects is alcohol making her words meld and slur together, which is not helped by the fact that her voice is raised to what is almost a shout as she addresses him. He’s never seen her before, and he would not think she were speaking to him if he weren’t the only one in the parking lot. Her headphones remain on, and she twirls her umbrella gleefully.

“Yes,” he answers, then remembers to be courteous enough to offer her a small smile in return.

“Very nice hotel!” she continues, changing the direction of her umbrella’s twirls. “Good food!”

“I’m glad I chose it,” he responds. His heart rate has been steadily increasing since he’s arrived, and he can’t seem to calm it.

“Welcome back!” she shouts into the rain.

“I’ve never been here before.”

The woman laughs, the sound dissonant and loud. “You are a funny man. Handsome, too.”

“Thank you.”

The Japanese woman grins again, hopping with one foot into a puddle. She’s wearing flats that look almost like ballet shoes, the soles rubbery but thin, the top of her feet uncovered. “You come late,” she repeats, and he knows that if he were closer to her, he would be able to smell the drink on her breath, on her raincoat, on her umbrella. “You come at night!” she says ecstatically, and he nods, not knowing what to say. “You have a good stay,” she orders, and her smile would be friendly if it weren’t so off-putting, the entire situation funny if his heart weren’t racing faster than wild horses. “Have a good stay!” she says once more, and she skips back up the street from where she came, turns the corner, and disappears. The last he sees of her is the twirl of her rainbow umbrella.

He locks his car, and heads back up to the back door. As he climbs up the cement stairs with his suitcase, he smells smoke, and jumps back as he sees a young man standing right beside him, close enough that he would have brushed against him if he were walking even an inch further left. He is smoking a cigarette, wearing loose jeans under a long maroon shirt that reaches his knees, chin-length blond hair doubly covered in a thin tiger-striped scarf and a knitted hat. Their eyes meet, and he stares at him as he opens the door, his gaze as penetrating as the smoke that enters his nose and stings his cheeks.

“Have a good night,” he says as he opens the door. He goes in, and doesn’t hear the man respond. He doesn’t look back, and presses the elevator button in a hurry.

He realizes that the cigarette man hadn’t been there when he had gone out, and he hadn’t heard nor seen the door open while he was outside. He concludes that he must have arrived as the Japanese woman was talking to him, but the knot in his stomach does not leave.

His room is cold. He notices that the air conditioning is on, and he turns it off immediately. It’s only the beginning of April. It’s still cold at night. He keeps his coat on as he goes into the bathroom to splash water on his face and brush his teeth, glancing into the ornate mirror. A thin layer of dust lines the bottom left corner of the glass. He takes a piece of toilet paper to wipe it off, leaning closer to do so, but starts and steps back quickly, nearly tripping over the side of the bathtub, as he notices letters inscribed in the dust, so thin they could almost have been written with a toothpick. He makes out a _V_ , then an _N_. He reaches over to erase them, but he can still see them in his mind.

He sleeps fitfully that night, awakened once by the air conditioning turning on suddenly, the cold air taking over the room like an icy blanket.

He’s awakened a second time by the television turning on, the static blaring in his ears, and he reaches for the remote on the bedside table, but it isn’t there, and he jumps out of the bed, his heart pounding, dizzy, lost—until he finds the remote, which he had fallen asleep next to and rolled over. He switches the television off, but he isn’t able to fall asleep until the sun begins to rise, and his alarm clock awakens him not even half an hour later.

 

_The second night._

He brushes his teeth, the bristles of his toothbrush harsh against his gums, and he tastes metal. He spits, then checks in the mirror to see if there’s still any more blood in his mouth. He is shocked to see that the layer of dust has reappeared, this time covering a larger surface. His heart twists and rises to his throat as he reads the new words that have formed on the glass, again so thin that without his glasses, he wouldn’t have been able to make them out.

_What’s your name?_

He takes a breath, and lets out the air shakily as he mouths his name. “Yuuri,” he says, almost silently.

He shakes himself, figuring it must be a prank by the housekeepers. He’s being ridiculous. He goes back out into the bedroom, pulls the curtains halfway closed, and looks outside for one last time before going to sleep. The blue lights of the café down the street flicker off as it closes for the night, and a bus passes by. He’s about to close the curtains completely when he notices another inscription in the corner of the windowpane, in the same handwriting, and he raises both hands to his mouth to stifle his scream.

_I knew it was you!_

He backs up toward the door, stumbling twice and falling once, grappling at the doorknob frantically, but his hands are covered in sweat and shaking like leaves, his head and his heart pounding and echoing through his body and through the entire room, his legs like jelly underneath him, failing to support him, collapsing, and he opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out. The radio turns on loudly, and he yells out, banging his shoulder against the wood of the door, and for a moment he’s petrified.

_Stay the night,_ sings the radio, crackling at first but then turning into a steady stream of music. _Stay the night_ , it blares, and it’s a song from the 80s but he recognizes it, and he trembles as he runs over to turn it off. He takes a deep breath, and the room is silent once again. He closes his eyes, tries to clear his mind. Maybe it will all go away.

He looks down, and in the dust of the bedside table, there’s a new message.

_We had a dog, before._

He runs to the bathroom and vomits. He hasn’t eaten much and so it turns into dry gagging, acidity burning his throat.

When he comes out, the message on the table is gone. “I never had a dog,” he whispers. “Never.”

He tucks himself into the covers, bundling himself tightly in the sheets, keeping a lamp on in the other corner of the room. He shivers, even though the air is no longer as chilly.

Oddly, that night, he sleeps deeply, dreaming vividly. The next morning, he recalls the dream in patches. Someone at his side, a tall, graceful figure; crashing waves on the beach; a poodle running beside them. He can’t recall the faces, nor the names, and it’s all spotty pieces of color and light when he tries to remember the specifics. As he shuts off his alarm clock, he is met with an eerie sense of déjà vu.

 

_The third night._

This time, although the messages still terrify him, he isn’t as surprised to see them. He returns to his room to find a whole group of them, and aching curiosity overpowers his fear as he proceeds to read them all, letter by letter, starting, as he has done for the past two nights, with the bathroom mirror.

_I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you like that._

_I haven’t seen you in so long._

_I didn’t think I would see you again._

He follows each message with a shaky finger, making sure to read every word. He moves on to the window, where he finds more.

_I'm glad you didn't end up like me._

_I can’t do much of anything here._

_This is pretty much all I can do._

_I wish you could see me._

“Who are you?” Yuuri says, his voice seeming out of place in the silence of the hotel room. The radio comes on again, and he jumps, startled.

_You don’t remember me, but I remember you,_ sings the radio, loudly again at first, but quickly made softer by some invisible touch.

He shuts it off, the point having been communicated. A new inscription is on the desk.

_I figured out how to lower the volume._

He smiles. He knows now that whoever this is—whatever this is—does not mean any harm. Yet he remains apprehensive, unsure, because he knows for a fact that this is not normal in any way. He wonders, momentarily, if he’s gone insane.

That night, his dream feels like a chunk of a memory, a piece of his life that has been stolen away from him and only just now returned to him. He’s ice skating, holding hands with the same person as before, their laughter echoing around an empty rink as the sun sets outside, the sound of blades scraping against the ice like strings and percussion. This time, he is able to identify a bit more—hair such a light and shining blonde that it looks nearly like molten silver, eyes a bright and piercing blue, shimmering like diamonds but as warm as embers. A soft grip, delicate fingers, a voice speaking sweetly to him, commenting on his technique but encouraging and kind.

The poodle is there again, and he knows he’s seen this dog before, although he’s never had a dog himself as far as he can remember, but this one is so familiar that he has trouble making the distinction between what has really happened in his life and the stuff of his dreams.

He wakes up in a cold sweat and a heavy heart, breath heaving and mind rushing wildly, as if something has been ripped away from him and crushed. He feels like he has been reliving his past, but it’s not _him_ , it’s someone else, but at the same time it _is_ him and he doesn’t quite know what to think.

 

_The fourth night_.

He’s exhausted, and he manages to get into the elevator, but fumbles with the buttons and stumbles out onto the wrong floor. The number on the wall tells him that he’s on floor twelve, and he decides to take the stairs up the rest of the way to try to wake himself up and so that he can eat the frozen dinner he’s bought for himself, since he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He expects to be climbing two flights of stairs, but he reaches the top after only one. He glances around, but the walls do indicate that he’s indeed on floor fourteen.

“Did you know that they mislabeled this floor?” he asks out loud when he gets into his room. “We’re actually on floor thirteen.” His bedside table immediately provides him with an answer.

_They were very superstitious, back then._

“They had reason to be, it seems,” replies Yuuri. He laughs, lightly.

_Ha ha ha_ , says the writing on his window as he moves across the room to look outside. _You’re right._

He smiles before getting a piece of toilet paper to wipe off the dust. He knows that somehow, it collects wherever his companion wants it to, and the latter writes quickly. “Can you only write when I’m not looking?” he asks.

_No,_ come the letters, faster than his own thoughts can form. _I just know this is all a bit strange, and I didn’t want to scare you even more._

“You’re very considerate,” he says as he takes his food out of the plastic grocery bag. He opens the microwave and sticks the platter in, punches in for three minutes. The microwave works, and he’s grateful for that. “You can talk to me whenever you’d like,” says Yuuri. “I’m not too scared anymore.”

_It’s hard for me, seeing you when you can’t see me._

He glances at the top of the microwave, where the message is written. The microwave beeps, and he removes his food, pulling his finger away quickly when it comes into contact with the scalding hot sauce. He takes his finger into his mouth and sucks it, soothing the pain. “You say you know me,” he says after a while, after he’s taken out napkins and his fork, and started poking at his dinner. It doesn’t look very appealing, thick globs of sauce covering up cubes of some sort of meat and rice. “How?”

_I knew you a long time ago. Years and years ago._

_You’re different now. You’re more serious._

_Yet you’re still the same. You’re still just as beautiful._

“Thank you,” he whispers. He isn’t certain of what exactly his companion means by this, but the words are soothing, genuinely kind, and he doesn’t know how he knows this, but he trusts them, trusts the author of these messages, in a way that he’s never trusted anyone before.

His dinner is awfully bland, lacking seasoning, the meat soggy and an unpleasant texture. He eats it anyway, but grimaces the whole way through.

_You used to love those rice bowls. The ones with breaded pork and eggs._

“Katsudon?”

_Yes._

“I love katsudon,” he says softly. “You do know me.”

_I do_.

That night, he dives into a deeper sleep than he’s ever had before, his dream nearly as real as every aspect of his day to day life. The figure is back, but this time he _can_ see a face, and it’s a beautiful face, nose tall and elegant, lips heart shaped and delicate as they smile at him. The body is muscular, skin smooth and rippling tightly across the back and arms, shoulders broad and strong and comforting.

“Victor,” he hears himself say. “Victor Nikiforov, are you making me breakfast?”

“It’s our day off, Yuuri,” says Victor. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Yuuri feels himself smile widely, his chest filled with emotions he’s never experienced, nearly bursting with contentment and bliss.

When he awakens, he feels even worse than the day before, hollow, unlike himself, his mind not present in the way that he’s used to. He feels _sad_ , although this word does not, cannot, describe exactly the way he’s feeling. He feels torn, squeezed uncomfortably, in a state of limbo where he doesn’t know what’s waiting for him, if anything at all.

 

_The fifth night._

He goes into the room, carrying a black plastic clipboard. He sits in the puffy armchair in the corner, and places the clipboard on his lap. “You can write on here, if you’d like.”

_That’s very kind of you,_ come the dusty letters on the new surface, and he smiles. He’s tired, so, so tired, and his eyelids droop down heavily with fatigue. He shakes himself, suddenly remembering.

“Are you Victor Nikiforov?” he asks.

The response takes an abnormally long time to come, although he’s certain the wait can’t have been longer than a few seconds. He feels tense, his heart beating nearly as quickly as on the first night, the night of all his encounters.

_I am,_ says his companion at last. Victor, he should say.

“How did you get here?”

_I died here,_ says Victor, simply, and Yuuri thinks he’s finished writing, but he continues. _You wanted to take a final trip before we got too old, and we came here. It truly ended up being my final trip._

“I see,” says Yuuri, even though he doesn’t see at all. He doesn’t understand, how he is involved in all this, how he could possibly have been a part of this.

_What do you do now?_

“I work in finance,” replies Yuuri.

_You used to figure skate. You were incredible._ They’re just small letters inscribed in dust, but Yuuri can sense the disappointment in Victor’s message, and he feels a pang in the back of his mind, a ball of heart-wrenching nostalgia coming up to fill the spaces between his bones.

“I still love skating.”

_I skated too. We used to skate together, often. We would take on the world._

“That sounds amazing.”

_It was._

Yuuri struggles to keep his eyes open, and ends up falling asleep sitting on the chair.

His dream that night is distinctly _alive_ , as he is plunged, drowned, in the life of another version of himself. Everything about him is the same, but it’s a different place, and he cannot control his own body. He is simply observing behind the eyes of another Yuuri. He is in a hotel bed, sheets messy and pulled out, but they smell clean, and he is naked. The curtains are open, but it doesn’t matter because they’re on a very high floor, and the window looks out onto what seems to be Barcelona. Victor Nikiforov walks in from the bathroom, and he is naked as well, and somehow none of this is strange or shocking, but comforting and reassuring.

Victor lies down beside him, wrapping his arms around him and gently kissing the back of his neck, then moving down his spine to the curve of his cheeks, where he kneads and massages the mounds of muscle as his lips flutter past. It’s intimate, and it’s quiet, and as Victor comes back up to face him, their mouths meet in an open-mouthed kiss, slow and sensual and filled with intense emotion. Victor reaches down with a hand to touch him, and Yuuri cries out softly, feeling Victor’s body against him, ripples of pleasure pulsing through him in ways he can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop. For the first time, he _feels_ , and it’s intense and powerful and overwhelming and he wants more, wants to soak in it until his feet are numb and his hands are shaking.

He’s gasping in pure exultation, Victor’s breaths coming down over his shoulder in puffs of heat, sweat building up on both their bodies as they move against each other, whispering each other’s names and sweet nothings across their heaving chests.

Yuuri wakes up abruptly, craving the warmth of a body by his side, but he’s still in the chair from the night before, his back stiff and his head aching. He leaps up when he realizes that he’s slept half an hour later than he should have, but does not even manage two steps before falling onto the floor on his hands and knees. Everything hurts, cramps in his legs and in his arms, pain spreading from his chest every time he takes a breath, and an agonizing feeling of loss and disorientation flowing from his brain into his hands, through the soles of his feet.

He tries to get up, and it takes him two attempts to make it into the bathroom to shower, after which the pain is suddenly gone. But the mornings have been getting worse, and he’s not sure how much more he can stand.

 

_The sixth night._

He comes into the room in a state of such fatigue that he nearly cannot stand up, but he manages to in the end. He’s never felt this tired before, where his eyes can just barely stay open, his whole body heavy and difficult to drag around.

“Is it normal that I feel so tired when I get back here?” muses Yuuri, clipboard in hand.

The answer takes nearly a minute to come, and when he sees it, he chuckles.

_I don’t know_ , say the small letters.

“I’m probably just overworked.” This, he suspects, is the main reason for his exhaustion.

_We shared this room, the two of us. Minako wanted to come, and she stayed a few rooms down. Yurio came too, and he shared a room with Lilia, who was nearing the end of her life._

“I don’t know who those people are.”

_I know. Maybe you’ll remember, though._

He doesn’t understand how he can remember something he has never known, but then he recalls his dreams, this other Yuuri who has lived a very different life, with a man named Victor Nikiforov and a poodle, making his mark as an ice skater rather than as an accountant.

He dozes off for about an hour, and dreams in brief flashes. He sees the hawk-faced receptionist, the umbrella twirling drunkard, the cigarette man, but this time he can place names on the faces, and he knows them all, he knows them so well, has known them for what seems like forever but is really only since he fell asleep—and this perplexes him when he awakens, because he doesn’t understand how he is only now remembering.

He is suddenly attacked by a fit of violent coughing, deep, guttural coughs as those of an animal, scraping his throat. He reaches over for his glass of water, but his hands shake, and as his body convulses, he spills most of the liquid over himself, cold and uncomfortable. Then his nose begins running as his coughs continue racking his chest and his throat, and he gasps for air from his mouth, struggling to remain sitting upright as his eyes bulge with the effort.

And then it’s gone, just as quickly as it came, and Yuuri’s shoulders relax as he breathes deeply, hand clutching the collar of his shirt. He’s fine, he assures himself, and he closes his eyes in order to regain a sense of peace.

“Why are they here? In this place?” asks Yuuri to the night as he stares out the window across the room, from his position in the armchair.

_There was a fire, on that night. You went out to buy something, but we stayed. You were buying champagne, I think. It was_

“Our anniversary.”

_our anniversary. Yes._

He doesn’t know how he recalls this. It’s just blurred moments in his mind, collected from his dreams, floating around like snowflakes. It’s impossible to catch just one and study it before it melts away, and fades into nothingness. They’re already disappearing quickly, just as dreams are quickly forgotten if one doesn’t keep thinking of them.

“We’re in St. Petersburg,” says Yuuri.

_We are._

“We lived—we lived in St. Petersburg, before.”

_Yes, we did._

A tear falls involuntarily from Yuuri’s eye, and he frowns as he brushes it away, but they keep coming, rivulets flowing constantly over his reddening cheeks. “Why aren’t you like them?”

_Why can you see them, and not me?_

“Yes.”

_I was given a choice,_ writes Victor, and Yuuri holds his breath. _I could live again, in this different world, where you wouldn’t remember me, and I wouldn’t remember you, or anything of the previous life. Or I could remain in this form, and I would never forget you._

“So Minako, and Lilia, and Yuri—”

_They chose the former._

“And you chose—”

_And I choose, I choose you,_ warbles the radio, and as Yuuri walks over to turn it off, he feels an agony in his chest like never before. He closes his eyes, raises a hand to his mouth, the tears now falling hard and fast. “Why?” he whispers, his voice hushed. “Why would you choose that?”

The answer doesn’t come, even as he waits five, ten minutes, and in the end, he decides to go to bed.

A torrent of images swirl through his mind like photographs caught in a cyclone, laughter and music coming closer and leaving and coming back like waves. And now he’s a room much like the Crystal Ballroom, except it’s fully lit, and there is champagne in tall glasses lining the wall, and the columns are beautiful and elegant and the room is full of people who smile and talk amongst each other. There is an arm around his waist, Victor’s arm, and Victor is loudly telling everyone that Yuuri has won a silver medal, even though everybody knows this, and there are not-so-slight traces of brandy and vodka on Victor’s breath, but Yuuri smiles at him anyway, because he’s beautiful and kind.

And then Yuuri is pushed forward in time a bit, and now he is dancing with Victor, dancing like he has never danced in this life, twirling and being lifted into the air and laughing with Victor, their faces so close that their noses brush. And then they’re kissing, and everyone in the room is watching but he doesn’t care. This kiss is so full of passion and emotion and pure, pure joy that Yuuri would trade it for ten years of teasing and jabs from Yuri Plisetsky. Every meeting of their lips is like sugar bursting from their tongues, every smile in between like a thousand fireworks exploding in the sky.

But when Yuuri wakes up, his throat feels parched, his body weak, barely capable of supporting his own weight when he stands up by the bed. He faints onto the carpet, and comes to nearly three hours later. He tries to rush out the door, but his legs still don’t feel right. He bumps into the wall right next to the elevators as he tries to embark in one, and it’s as if his vision is so clouded by his dreams that he can barely see. He hopes he’ll be able to get through the day.

 

_The seventh night._

“Victor?” he calls as he enters the hotel room.

_Yes?_ is the message on the clipboard.

“Victor, is it normal that I feel like this? Why do I feel like this?” Yuuri’s voice trembles as he speaks, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth, catching in his throat, muddled and messy in his mind.

_Is that a cane?_

“It’s a sturdy branch. I found it in the park right outside of the hotel. My legs could barely support me today, Victor. I felt so tired; I could barely keep my eyes open.”

He waits for an answer, and not receiving one, he makes his way into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash up, all the while leaning either on his cane or on the counter, sitting on the toilet seat in order to keep his balance for a longer period of time. Finally, _finally_ , words appear on the mirror, the same as the ones of the day before, and he laughs mirthlessly.

_I don’t know_.

It’s all so ridiculous. He’s going crazy. He’s going completely, completely mad. “You don’t know what, Victor?” he pleads. “That’s not—that’s not an answer, Victor; I need more, I need help, I need…” He breaks off, and bursts into tears, heavy, violent tears that have his chest heaving and his stomach in pain, his head aching terribly. He doesn’t entirely know why he’s crying, but it hurts nevertheless.

_I’m sorry._

Yuuri somehow makes it to the bed, and collapses on top of the covers, not even bothering to pull them in around him.

He’s in Barcelona again, and he’s holding hands with Victor, and there’s something in his coat pocket, a little velvet box that he turns over with the fingers of his free hand. The air is chilly, but around them is a warmth that he can’t quite put his finger on, a warmth that doesn’t come from the lights of the street vendors but instead from the aura between them, a sort of radiance that surrounds them and envelops them. He turns over the box quicker, his fingers trembling, his heart increasing in its pace as he hears the voices of a choir in the distance, the ringing of a clock tower marking seven o’clock.

“Where are we going, Yuuri?” asks Victor, and his voice has never sounded so clear, despite the fact that the square is bustling and full of energy. Victor’s voice is there, beside him, special and soft and just for him.

Yuuri answers by simply tugging him further through the evening market, and offering him a nervous smile. He’s terrified, but at the same time he’s confident, confident that this will go well, and the nagging doubt in his mind is virtually forgotten. He supposes that Victor feels his hand trembling in his grip, and he holds him tighter, just in case.

They arrive at the steps of the Barcelona Cathedral, and climb to the closed wooden doors, the golden light from within the building and the hazy glow of the streetlamps giving them enough brightness to see each other clearly. Yuuri feels hot, his grip faltering, but Victor tightens his own to make up for it, offers him a reassuring but uncertain smile—uncertain because Victor still doesn’t quite know what he’s planning, reassuring because Victor has for months now always made him feel comfortable and at ease.

Yuuri takes out the box, and opens it to reveal the shining pair of gold rings inside, rings that cost him a fortune but that were completely worth it, because Victor, he knows, is worth everything and more, and if he could, Yuuri would give him the world. And he places one of the rings on Victor’s finger, as Victor gazes at him in shock and surprise, a gaze that rapidly transitions to warmth as Victor himself places the second ring on Yuuri’s hand.

And Victor speaks, with tears in his eyes. “I want to be by your side, Yuuri. For as long as time will give us.”

Yuuri awakens with a jolt, having rolled over and fallen off of the bed. There’s a bruise on his forehead and on his right shoulder, and he opens his eyes wide. There’s a draft coming in from over his head, and the sound of the wind indicates to him that the window has been opened. That’s when he realizes that he can’t breathe.

Desperately, he clutches at his throat and grapples at his face, opening his mouth wide and gasping for air. His nostrils are blocked, and his neck feels constrained, suffocated. He can barely move, and he’s cold, and his eyes and his head ache, and he feels dizzy and nauseous. He’s drowning. He’s drowning, deeper and deeper, his lungs almost giving out.

“Victor!” he manages to choke out, as his gasps become shallower and more frantic, and his mind whirs and buzzes despite how much it _hurts,_ how much everything, every movement, is a strain—and suddenly, with a shock, he realizes what’s happening to him, realizes what’s going on.

He can’t believe he didn’t figure it out before, and he would kick himself for it if he weren’t struggling to simply keep his eyes open and his heart beating. The air is coming back to him now, and with it the energy he needs to clamber up into a crawling position and grab the clipboard from its position right in front of him. He coughs as he tries to let out the words, his entire body shaking and nearly dropping back down to the floor with every convulsion.

“Victor,” he says, his breathing quick and painful. “Are you trying to kill me?”

_Yuuri_

“Yuuri what?” He coughs again, and his voice is hoarse and scratchy. “Are you trying to kill me, Victor Nikiforov?”

This time, there is no answer, not even his name, not a single word, and Yuuri’s body trembles violently from his toes to his forehead. It’s two in the morning. “I have to leave,” he whispers roughly. “I can’t stay any longer.”

_Please,_ say the words on the clipboard, the tone in the writing rushed, wretched and hopeless. _Please, Yuuri. Please stay the night._ _Please_

Yuuri doesn’t wait for the rest of the sentence, and uses the little strength he has regained to push the clipboard across the room, and crawl his way to the door, where he unhooks the latch. The words that appear right under his nose cause him to scream, they’re being written so fast and desperately.

_Please stay, Yuuri. I hadn’t seen you in so long before this, and I don’t know if I will ever see you again if you leave now. Please._

For the third time in two days, tears fall from Yuuri’s eyes, tears of pure pain, as he feels his heart being wrenched from his chest and torn in two, his dreams mixing with reality in a way that is overwhelming and confusing and utterly mad. But he knows that if he stays, he will be consumed by it all, imprisoned by this past life and this emotion that he has never had any true experience with.

He allows one last sob to ripple through his body, then grabs the doorknob with both hands and pulls, clambering out of the room on his hands and knees, and slams the door behind him.

_I love you,_ whispers the radio as the door closes, coming to life one final time. _Do you remember?_

**Author's Note:**

> Song credits: "Stay the Night," Chicago  
> "Taking Over Me," Evanescence  
> "I Choose You," Andy Grammer
> 
> Please leave comments and kudos or come talk to me on tumblr! [@dystopiansushi](https://dystopiansushi.tumblr.com/)


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